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Maybe I'm way out of line here, but a lot of people in this sub are missing the point about UNH's price action today and in the long-term future. Most people are busy analyzing the stock itself (P/E ratios, historical growth rates), and not analyzing the *holders*. Look at UNH like a fund manager has to.
You and I can just liquidate our position in 1 second, but big players don't have that luxury. If they decide their thesis is broken they need to sell every single day for weeks. In this case, wonder: how many of these whales see Medicare rates being dead for the next 3 years? The loopholes that the CMS is claiming to close are bigger than the TACO thesis right now - Trump isn't going to undo the upcoding loophole, he isn't going to let insurers go through old charts and bill for things that are missed, and they aren't going to stop the V28 rules from continuing to tighten the noose.
**Receipts for the regulatory stuff that is not going away**:
- [CMS Advance Notice Fact Sheet](https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/2027-medicare-advantage-part-d-advance-notice) - specifically **excluding diagnosis information from unlinked Chart Review Records... from risk score calculation.** This was the source of BILLIONS of dollars of "found" revenue over the past decade. The legal context is from [United States ex rel. Poehling v. UnitedHealth Group](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/united-states-intervenes-false-claims-act-lawsuit-against-unitedhealth-group-inc-mischarging) - the DOJ has been fighting these "chart review" charges since 2017, and yesterday the regulator (CMS) just bypassed the court and deleted the ability for insurers to even keep charging like this going forward.
- The [V28](https://www.cms.gov/files/document/2024-advance-notice-pdf.pdf) model is removing ~2,000 diagnosis codes (like "mild depression" and "vascular disease without complication") that were prone to upcoding. This deletes an entire inflation lever that insurers used to pull.
- And while everyone watches Medicare, CMS has closed the [Provider Tax loophole](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/05/15/2025-08566/medicaid-program-preserving-medicaid-funding-for-vulnerable-populations-closing-a-health) that states used to funnel extra cash to Medicaid insurers. Another headwind for 2026 to add to the pile.
Even if Trump asks for the CMS to guide back up a bit, we aren't gonna see 4-6%, I think at MOST they get to 1.5-2%.
So just like, there's a lot of regulatory changes going on that directly attack the business model that these providers have utilized for the last decade. UNH and others got really big because they were winning the regulatory battle but the tides seem to be shifting. **A decade of winning could become a decade of losing ground.**
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**Why institutional players might keep heading for the doors**
- Some players are forced to exit positions due to a mandate. Many funds are strictly Growth Funds, and when UNH stopped growing its revenue (as we saw... down 2%, the first decline in 30 years)... the portfolio managers must start selling it.
- ESG and "regulatory risk" funds like BlackRock or Aladdin are forced to trim their positions by the compliance desks. They might love the stock but the Risk Officer forces a 50% position trim.
- Fund managers also have, cynically, a career risk incentive that might even be bigger than these forces. Fund managers don't always think like value investors - they wonder "if I buy UNH now and it goes down 10% more, or if I buy it and it is flat for 3 years, I'll get fired or my bonus will be miniscule". Pros would rather miss the bottom 20% than be caught holding the bag on the way further down. They need a momentum shift to justify buying to the LPs. They aren't gonna touch your "no brainer" deep value stock until the knife has hit the floor and stopped spinning.
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> *Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up.*
In value diligence you should always be asking yourself these kinds of questions:
- **Who owns this stock?** Massive compounder funds own UNH. If UNH stops looking like a compounder the exit door gets crowded.
- **Why do they have to sell?** Is the money rotating out of healthcare middlemen? Is there a core metric breakdown like revenue growth receding?
- **Why can't they buy back in yet?** Did a binary event just block purchases from a risk-averse compliance department?
tl;dr Big Money is paying a premium (selling low) to buy liquidity and certainty. Small Money (you) are paid to provide that liquidity and absorb the uncertainty. If you are right, you get paid for having a 3+ year time horizon when they only had a few quarters to run. If you are wrong, you get crushed because you stood in front of a structural exit door.